The Profane
by Womble27
Summary: Why were the Profane in the Deep Roads? What were they before and why are they there? A little backstory I made up about the Profane. One-shot. T because... it's a scary subject.


**Hi guys :) This idea struck me as I was replaying the Deep Roads in DA2. Remember those weird skeleton things you come across, the Profane? Well, I just got to thinking about why they were down there, and this was the result. Hope you enjoy my little backstory. It's a lot darker than my normal stuff, and written in quite a different style, so please review if you think it's any good. **

**Huggles! ^_^**

Once, we lived. We had friends, possesions, homes. We lived in the halls of our Ancestors, we laughed and loved, had families and duties we were proud to perform.

But no more.

Now we fester in this airless prison, left to rot in the deep bowels of the earth.

Most of us did not know the reason for our incarceration. All we knew is that there was blood, and someone screamed. Then the guards came for us. We were torn away from our wives and husbands, children and friends and locked in this dank pit, far away from any memory of light. Most of us did not understand why we imprisoned.

But the Elders did.

At first we argued with them. We begged and pleaded for them to tell us what crime had been so terrible that the nobles had had to do away with our entire house. But they would not tell us. They stayed as silent as the twisted stone that surrounds us. We stared at them with mistrustful eyes as they huddled together, ancient and wizened against the biting cold. There was no reasoning with them.

Reason does not exist in this place.

Hope does not exist.

Not anymore.

Justice, morality, integrity. All flee in the face of desperation. And desperate is what we became.

We were starving, you see. Nothing, nothing can survive down here without being corrupted. The Taint suffuses even the earth itself, turning everything around it black and sick. Our food rotted in our mouths and our water turned into a stinking sludge. Our bellies screamed with emptiness. The younglings cried out in pain, not understanding what ailed them.

And slowly, unbearably, time crept on.

And as the hunger grew we were driven to unspeakable measures.

Surreptitiously, a girl was chosen. No more than ten, she was too young, too weak from hunger to fight us off. The look on her face as we converged on her was one of abject terror but we were beyond caring. So far gone were we in our madnees that we turned a deaf ear to her cries.

A rock was brought down and a life was ended. It was too simple. Wrong. Bad. An act that made monsters of us all and it took less than thirty seconds to complete. Wrong.

When the deed was done, some of us felt guilt, but it was quickly subdued by the lure of food.

Food... We fought over it like rabid Tezpadam, snarling at any that got too close to what each of us perceived to be our kill.

We lifted the meat to our mouths, the hot blood running down our wrists promising to quench the burning in our throats.

We each took no more than a single, blissful bite before the meat turned into rancid sludge that leaked through our fingers. Our aungished cries echoed throughout the caverns, the agony of having tasted food only to be denied it was almost more than we could bear.

The Taint had corrupted even our own flesh.

It was then, in the blackest depths of our despair, that He came to us.

We had only heard tales of the strange other world that humans called the Fade. Perhaps if we had known what He was, we would not have accepted His offer. Death would have been preferable to the existence we have now.

But come He did, and we struck a bargain with Him. In exchange for teaching us to survive, He would be allowed to remain and feed off of our hunger. It seemed a fair deal, and theirin lay our ignorence, accepting His offer without fully understanding what 'to feed off our hunger' meant. The beings of the Fade are tricky things, and what they imply and what they mean are two very different things.

But the deal had been struck, and sealed in blood. There was no going back.

He made it so that we could never die without being slain. We were overjoyed at the thought of our continued survival. We danced and sang for the first time since our imprisonment. We began to look to the future again. And then we realised.

We still hungered. That is what the demon had meant. We would live, but we would be eternally starving, yearning for something to fill the aching hole inside of us. And He would feast on our hunger.

We refused to accept it at first. We called to the demon, but He had disappeared, vanished into the deeper parts of the earth where we dared not tread.

So in desperation, we at last turned to the magic stones that lay in the deeps. The lyrium that ran through them was corrupted, but as we could not die anything was worth trying. Anything to soothe the ache.

We broke our teeth to fit them in our mouths, gums bleeding as we forced rocks down swollen throats. And for a few ecstatic moments... we were full.

Then the feeling passed and we were ravenous once more.

We hunted for more of the rocks, doing anything to relive those few moments where the agony was relieved. We were so focused, we didn't notice what the lyrium was doing to our bodies.

What was soft rotted away. Our skeletons became as hard as stone, and flames burned in our eyes and ribcages. We didn't care. Nothing mattered except finding the magic stones. Everything Dwarven about us was lost.

And now the pretty rocks are all gone. Now we hunger worse than ever before, the pain so sharp that it cuts across the mind in such a way that it is all you can think about.

Food.

We must have food.

The hunger is unbearable, each second an exquisite new agony that demands an end we cannot grant.

It has been so long since we have seen the pretty light, so long since our bellies have been full...food...

Suddenly, a grinding sound comes from above us, and what is left of our noses picks up a scent that we haven't smelt in so long, we almost cannot place it.

The scent of a human.

A female voice rings out "Varric, when we get out of here, I'm going to kill your brother. Andraste's ass, how could he just leave us? Mangy son of a bitch..."

"I second that, Hawke." A second voice rumbles, a deep baritone. And with it comes a new smell. _Elven._

We can hear the wet sound of their hearts beating, blood pumping through their veins as they move closer and closer towards the caverns where we dwell.

We can only think of one thing as they head towards us, bringing with them a warmth that we have not felt since ages past.

_Fresh meat._


End file.
